There has been a debate concerning a teaching of John MacArthur that has been going on for 15 years. In the following article, found at MacArthur's ministry website, he writes his recent thoughts on the debate.

I'm still reading Descartes "Rules for Direction", found in volume 1 of "The Philosophical Works of Descartes", and came across this interesting quote. It struck me that this is great advice, not just for the philosopher, but for any person who wishes to learn anything: from how to repair a car to the most sublime and profound theological truth."We must principally beware of wasting our time in such cases by proceeding at random and unmethodically; for even though the solution can often be found without method, and by lucky people sometimes quicker, yet such procedure is likely to enfeeble the faculties and to make people accustomed to the trifling and the childish, so that for the future their minds will stick on the surface of things, incapable of penetrating beyond it."[1] I find that we are so often accustomed to seek knowledge in a random way that we never actually arrive at knowledge. This is most evident in the areas of Philosophy and Th…

The following link leads to the amazon website for the book "Methodical Realism" by Étienne Gilson. This is a book to buy, read, and re-read. I would highly suggest that everyone get ahold of this book.

In his book, published posthumously, For Direction, Descartes makes an interesting statement concerning the certitude that we have concerning the claims of Divine Revelation. Having just finished outlining his view on the two ways in which humans gain knowledge Descartes turns to the question of Divine Revelation. He says,"But this does not prevent us from believing matters that have been divinely revealed as being more certain than our surest knowledge, since belief in these things, as all faith in obscure matters, is an action not of our intelligence, but of our will."[1] Descartes vote of confidence in the trustworthiness of Divine Revelation is worth noting, but it is a remnant of the medieval philosophers views of scripture, who claimed that Divine Revelation was the only authority to which we could appeal with absolute certainty. His claim that belief in the propositions of Divine Revelation is an act of the will is also in accord with Augustine, and Aquinas…